—all these factors led to delay and confusion. Miss Shaw 
made five shipments to the Royal Botanic Gardens at 
Kew between August 1957 and the end of 1962. Kew 
was able to identify only one species, and that one with 
doubt: Derek Reed linked the material under study with 
Heimiella retispora (Pat. & Baker) Boedijn sensu Boedijn, 
a genus separated off from the Boletellus by Boedijn and 
named in honor of one of us. There is nothing in the 
papers published about this species to indicate that it 
might have psychotropic properties. In 1957, Kew for- 
~ warded some of the specimens to Dr. Rolf Singer at Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, where, following in our steps, he was 
collaborating at the moment with Dr. Alexander Smith 
on astudy of the hallucinogenic mushrooms of Mexico. 
“fe proceeded to describe a new species, Russula Non- 
dorbingt Sing., to which he attributed hallucinogenic 
‘properties. The collectors who had sent him the inexact 
indigenous name of nondorbingi later proposed to replace 
it by rondo bingi,*’ but Dr. Singer had already published 
an article on ‘A Russula Provoking Hysteria in New 
Guinea’ (Mycopathologia et Mycologia Applicata, 9, 4: 
pp. 275-8), and given it the erroneous name. 
Here the documentation prior to our inquiries ends. 
On several occasions we have encountered two Russulas 
called locally nonda bingi and nonda bingi wam (‘false 
bingi’). Neither tallies with the description of Dr. Singer, 
and this is confirmed by the sporal differentiations among 
the three. The Kuma brought us repeatedly the two 
kinds, the true and the false nonda bingi, the first edible, 
the second never eaten. But they also brought us on 
several occasions two species of white Russulas of which 
one is called nonda mosh and the other nonda mosh wam, 
or ‘false nonda mosh’. ‘Throughout the Wahgi the former 
* Vide letters from Stanley Christian to Dr. Shaw dated Dec. 10, 
1957, and Oct. 24, 1962. 
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